Metal Maniacs Magazine

In A Mental
Vortex

December 1991

by Bonvoj Krgin

"We do a very special thing, it's like we do something different. We're not death metal or commercial metal -- we're something in between -- so it's hard for us to be commercially accepted right away." Coroner drummer Marquis Marky is sitting in a Tampa hotel room evaluating the progress of the Swiss techno-thrash trio which has garnered international recognition through the release of their three long-players to date. He's in town with guitarist Tommy Baron mixing the group's latest creation, Mental Vortex, which was recorded during April/May at Germany's Sky Trak Studios with Amerrican producer Tom Morris. Although the group are happy with the sound they achieved on the new opus, Marquis makes it clear that they will "probably record the whole next LP here at Morrisound Studios (the Tampa-based recording facility co-owned by Tom Morris that is the site for the mixing sessions for Mental Vortex,) because Sky Trak is not very good to record in. The recording room is very small, and we had a lot of problems with the equipment breaking down, which sometimes took a long time to fix." Despite all the delays, Mental Vortex has turned out to be Coroner's most mature yet accessible offering to date, a fact that Marquis attributes to the "extra time we had to do the songs. This time, there was a period of about two years during which we had to write the material, so there was a lot of new and different influences that contributed to the sound of the new record." For one, much of the speed and the unconventional time changes that characterized the group's earlier efforts have been replaced by a more controlled, far more focused song-writing approach, a result of "all the touring we've done since our last album," says Tommy. "Performing live, we realized that slow songs were much more fun to play. It's great doodling around, but not all the time. Too much of anything gets boring, and we've tried to vary things a bit on the new album, so that it's a little more interesting for the listener."

Containing seven original numbers, Mental Vortex also features a special Coroner-style rendition of The Beatles' "I Want You," a number that the band discovered while listening to a copy of the Fab Four's Abbey Road album that somebody'd left behind at their rehearsal studio. "We'd been looking for a cool song to coveer, 'cause we needed another song to fill up the album," explains Marquis, "but we couldn't agree on anything. Every time I or Ron (Royce, bassist/vocalist) would like a song, Tommy wouldn't like it, or vice versa. When we heard "I Want You," we thought that it was really powerful-- one of the heaviest things The Beatles have ever done -- and we thought that it would fit in well with what we were trying to do, so we gave it a shot."

Euphoric as they are about their new album, Coroner are feeling far less enthusiastic about the recent video release of their debut East Berlin performance, shot early last year and issued domestically through Strand/VCI Entertainment. "To me, it's just not Coroner," states Marky. "When we were told the show would be filmed, we expressed our dissatisfaction to the record label over the choice of venue and the timing of the whole thing, and we were basically told, "if you don't like the finished product, we just won't release it." Well, we didn't like it, and we told them so, but they went ahead and released it anyway. We would have preferred it it we'd filmed a show at a smaller club, with the lights we wanna have and the sound we wanna have." Adamant about not making the same mistake, Coroner are planning on issuing a full-length home video next year that will "be done like we want to have it," Marquis says. "We're gonna do a 50-minute video including five songs, plus our personal film footage, interviews, and stuff like that. It's gonna be like a movie about Coroner, and it'll be done our way."

Acknowledging the limitations of being a three-piece when it comes to their live peerformance, Coroner nevertheless insist that "it's so great being a trio that I don't see any reason to expand," states Tommy. "It's hard enough for the three of us to agree on our music, I can't imagine there being another person we'd have to keep happy." Not to mention that "there are thousands of bands with two guitarists and a singer and whatever, and this makes us a bit special and unique, so it's cool." Currently preparing to embark on their first proper headlining tour of Europe, Coroner are anxious to return Stateside, where they enjoy playing the most. "It's just a lot more exciting, coming from Europe and everything," explains Marquis. "The people seem more open-minded, and there's different kinds of crowds at the shows, not just the headbangers and the thrashers. It's a whole different vibe, and it's a lot more interesting to us than performing back home."

Reprinted without permission from the magazine Metal Maniacs, vol. 35, issue #12, December 1991.

Created and Maintained by Design Vortex

In A Mental Vortex

In A Mental
Vortex